Beyond Endor
by Pellaeon
Summary: The Battle of Endor. The decisive battle after which the Empire began to wane and the Alliance to ascend changed the lives of many people. In Chapter 2, President Mon Mothma is on Nhei Klep Station, Sullust System. It isn't that long: Review. Review.
1. Chapter 1: Gilad Pellaeon: Endor System

Chapter 1 (Gilad Pellaeon—Location: Endor System)

Lieutenant Gilad Pellaeon looked in shock out the viewport. It couldn't be. It _couldn't_ be. The most powerful force in the galaxy—the Imperial Navy—had trapped a motley Rebel fleet over this forsaken backwater of a world—and lost. Somehow, the Rebel forces had managed to take advantage of a situation which had only hours earlier been solidly in Imperial hands.

Even as he stared aimlessly at the scene unfolding before him, he had a hard time believing what he was seeing. _Executor_, Darth Vader's personal battleship and the flagship of the Navy, was now a charred hulk still smoldering, looking for all the galaxy as though it were a cancerous tumor on the surface of the Death Star, its cadre of promising young officers—the next generation of the Empire's military leadership—destroyed with it. Around him, dozens of Imperial Star Destroyers lay in ruins, countless lesser vessels strewn about beside them, slowly moving them on courses that over the millennia would scatter them amongst the stars.

"Lieutenant."

How could the Empire have lost, and by so much?

_"Lieutenant." _

With some effort, Pellaeon drew himself back from his brooding and to his business. He still had work to do. The battle was technically still raging, though only the densest of the Empire's newest and greenest recruits would believe it was still winnable. An Imperial defeat—the first on this scale—was a foregone conclusion.

"Yes, Captain?"

"Move the _Justice's Dagger_ to sector aurek, herf, twelve, and call up a higher resolution image of what's going on over there on the Death Star," the Captain said, pointing out the viewport to a place on the massive battle station.

"Right away, sir."

Pellaeon ordered the pilot to navigate the Star Destroyer to the appropriate sector, and called up the zoomed, higher resolution imaging his Captain had requested onto the main viewport.

Looking down at his control panel, he almost missed seeing a small number of Rebel starfighters dive into the bowels of the Death Star, as though they were parasitic, blood-sucking insects about to engorge themselves on some large beast.

"Lieutenant, order all of the _Dagger's_ remaining fighter squadrons to chase down those Rebel fighters. It is imperative that they be stopped," his commanding officer suddenly snapped. "Then...then draw the _Dagger_ away from the Death Star."

Pellaeon was about to question the Captain's orders, even as he reached for the intercom to communicate the orders to the _Dagger's_ squadron leaders, when the reasoning suddenly struck him. His face grew pale as the blood rushed from his head.

Those fighters were going to blow up the Death Star. The fighters, so small and seemingly puny, could destroy the Death Star's exposed reactor core, and thus obliterate the battle station itself. Something so paltry was about to eliminate the very symbol of Imperial invincibility.

On some level, Pellaeon wondered whether this was symbolic of the final outcome of the Rebellion's war against the Empire.

Meanwhile, Pellaeon fulfilled his duties, ordering the squadrons after the Rebel starfighters, and instructing the pilot to turn the _Dagger_ away from the Death Star.

As the ship was driving for cold, empty space away from the battle station, the Death Star—whose image was still being cam-fed to the primary viewport—exploded.

As fast as the Star Destroyer was, it wasn't fast enough. The explosive wave of compressed energy hit the _Dagger_ with such force that it bucked as though it were a wild animal being tamed. Pellaeon was tossed into the air, and then tossed to the deck. Hard.

As he lifted himself onto his hands and knees, he felt blood dribble down from his nose to drip off his chin. Shakily standing up, he started to assess the situation and prepare for the Captain's next orders.

It turned out that that was unnecessary. The Captain was sprawled on the deck, his neck twisted at an inhuman angle. Pellaeon rushed to his side, and pressed two of his fingers to the commanding officer's neck to check for his pulse. He found the Captain was dead.

Unnerved even more, Pellaeon struggled for some composure as his straightened himself up. Looking around him at the bridge crew, some of whom he had served with for almost a decade, he said, "Captain Rawkins is dead, I'm in command of the _Justice's Dagger_ now."

For a moment, there was silence on the bridge, then one crew member drew herself up into some semblance of a parade-ground stance and gave a sharp salute.

"Captain Pellaeon, awaiting your orders, sir."

Drawing themselves back to the present, the rest of the crew soon followed suit with saluting their new Captain.

Pellaeon looked at each of his bridge crewmen. It was something that he thought a Captain would do. Then he gave his first command as Captain.

"Check on the rest of the crew and give me a full status report."

"The _Dagger's_ lost two of its secondary engines and its portside primary. Operating at twenty percent power. All shields down. Major hull breaches in sectors Mern five, Osk five, Krill eleven, and Isk two. Twenty turbolaser batteries still partially functional. Five ion cannon batteries." a young ensign clipped out, reading the diagnostics from his terminal.

Pellaeon let out an almost inaudible hiss of breath. It was as he had expected. The _Dagger_ had only made it out of the Death Star's destructive explosion by the skin of its teeth. Furthermore, they were in no condition to continue this fight.

"Have Captain Rawkins' body brought to the medical bay, and after that...after that order a retreat for the Inbiti system," Pellaeon choked out.

Yes, they had lost the battle. Hopefully, they had not lost the war.


	2. Chapter 2: Mon Mothma: Sullust System

Chapter 2 (Mon Mothma—Location: Nhei Klep Station, Sullust System)

The innocuous station orbited the innocuous, medium-sized, brown planet, which in turn orbited its innocuous, yellow, star in this innocuous region of the Outer Rim. The plain station itself was chiefly a collection of a series of warrens and chambers, windowless and—to humans—seemingly confining, mimicking the living conditions of the subterranean-dwelling Sullustans on the planet below. However, the station did house a few personal quarters for foreign dignitaries which sported immense viewports comprising almost the entire side of the suite which offered spectacular vistas of the stars just beyond the transparisteel. Mon Mothma, leader of the Alliance to Restore the Republic and nominal Commander in Chief of the Alliance armed forces, was in one such room now, staring out the viewport at the stars, and digesting the news which had just been relayed to her.

The stars. Orbiting them were millions of worlds, with trillions of people, which were oppressed and crushed under the tyrannical control of the Emperor and his New Order. Or at least under the New Order.

The starscape from Sullust being foreign to her, and astrography not being one of her fortes, Mon Mothma probably couldn't pick it out from among the numerous scintillating jewels in front of her even if she had tried. But one of those stars out there was the star which the forest moon of Endor orbited. One of those stars was where Emperor Palpatine had died. One of those stars was where the Death Star was defeated before it could murder another world. One of those stars was where the Empire was dealt its greatest blow in its short existence.

And one of those stars was where the Galactic Empire began to die.

The Emperor had been a cruel, harsh, and tyrannical dictator. Billions of Alderaanians and Caamasi had been murdered because they were viewed to be a threat to the Empire. They _were_ a threat to Imperial oppression, but they were also pacifists. Emperor Palpatine had condoned the genocide of peoples who could not militarily oppose him. That then marked him as a coward, too.

He had allowed the enslavement of several nonhuman races. Some, such as the Wookiees, Mon Calamari, and her own hosts, the Sullustans, were once full-fledged citizens of the Republic, with equal standing with humanity and long members of the galactic civilization along with their human counterparts. But the Rights of Sentience were stricken from the Constitution, alien worlds were given human governors and representatives, and aliens from all over the Galaxy were reduced to being considered subhuman, and hardly more than animals. That would soon change.

Whether Palpatine was corrupt from the days before he was Senator of Chomell Sector, or whether his corruption sprang up from the power bestowed on him by the Emergency Powers Acts was something that would be debated for decades. Mon Mothma had been fooled by the Senator, once taking him as a fellow colleague who supported their common Republican form of government which had served their civilization for so long. She could not blame those Senators and Representatives who had voted the Chancellor in as Emperor, and who had approved of the legislation establishing the New Order. Many of them were as sidelined by the laws as she was. Some of the alien senators legislated themselves and their constituents into chains. No, the government which would replace the Empire would not punish them. They—and the Galaxy—had already paid enough.

Turning from the viewport and the stars, but not from her ruminations, she walked over to her bed, and picked up two of the static holographs that she had taken out of her satchel and placed there upon hearing word that the Emperor had died, and the Empire defeated. Out of necessity being a Rebel leader in hiding, she traveled exceedingly light, but even still, there were some momentos that she believed she had to bring with her.

Looking at both pictures, though tending more toward the one in her right hand, she felt as though she was addressing each in person.

"We did it," Mon Mothma whispered, a slight dusting of tears beginning to water her eyes. "The Emperor is defeated. The _Empire_ is defeated. The Republic will rise again. We have won."

Gently putting the holograph in her left hand—Senator Bel Iblis—back onto the bed, she devoted her attention to the man in the other holograph. Bail Organa and she had been close friends even back before they had jointly decided to form the Alliance. Now he wasn't here to see the success of what he had helped begun. As she looked at her friend's visage, she wondered how many others had lost friends and loved ones to the Empire—how many had given their lives so that the Empire might be overthrown, and democracy returned to the Galaxy. At least now she had evidence that they had not fought and died in vain. The Emperor was destroyed while in his monstrous creation. The Empire itself would be the next to be vanquished.

And freedom for the Galaxy would march on. Democracy, civilization, _the Republic_, a _New_ Republic, would resume.


End file.
